Getting ready to start construction is the five block Burnside/Bridgehead development by OpusNW. The rendering of the project includes a Lowes which is no longer in the project due to neigborhood demands.
Two major projects are set to begin on East Burnside in Portland
Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR), Nov 1, 2006 by Kennedy Smith
Traffic gets a bit congested during the morning drive along East Burnside leading up to the Burnside Bridge headed into downtown. Commuters, freight trucks and buses stop and go, day laborers hang out at an empty lot at Sixth Avenue, and early risers jog up and down the street.
But underneath the hustle and bustle, the noise and traffic, there's a change going on at East Burnside from the bridgehead to 12th Avenue.
"It's going to be a street that people don't even recognize once it gets all built out," said Tim Holmes, president of the Central Eastside Industrial Council.
Two major projects are set to begin on East Burnside - Opus Northwest's Burnside Bridgehead and the Burnside-Couch couplet headed by the Portland Office of Transportation.
When complete, the Burnside Bridgehead project will be a 195,000- square-foot, $250 million mixed-use center at the east end of the Burnside Bridge. The Burnside-Couch couplet project will turn East Burnside and Northeast Couch streets into one-way thoroughfares, with East Burnside heading east and Couch heading west. It will extend to the intersection at 12th Avenue, where Sandy Boulevard meets Burnside, and will reconnect Couch where it gets dissected by Sandy.
Lloyd Lindley, an urban designer who was involved with the Burnside-Couch couplet, completed economic analysis of the couplet, which indicated that in 20 years a revitalized Lower Burnside would generate about $7 million a year in new taxes and have a net assessed value of more than $300 million.
"You can look down the street and see the underdeveloped parcels that have the potential to be unlocked once there's better pedestrian access, wider sidewalks and narrower streets," Lindley said.
"This area is priming itself for change," said Bill Hoffman, project manager at PDOT. "What we have is two gateways at the Central Eastside: one at 12th and one at the bridgehead. What happens in between it will act as a catalyst."
Although the two major projects are still on the drawing board and not expected to be completed until at least 2009, activity is already picking up on the street, Hoffman said.
That's partly due to the popularity of the Doug Fir Lounge at 830 E. Burnside St. and its adjacent Jupiter Hotel. The restaurant and music venue has brought to town a slew of popular musical acts and has been listed as a top destination in magazines like Sunset, Jane and Metropolis, as well as the Frommer's guidebook. To boot, the Doug Fir has helped keep afloat a few independent art boutiques located directly across the street.
Up the road on 11th Avenue is developer Kevin Cavenaugh's emerging Burnside Rocket, an under-construction mixed-use building slated to house a restaurant, office and retail space. Cavenaugh is reaching for gold status from the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system.
Between Sixth and Seventh avenues, Dave Dernbach of Mattsonian Investments LLC is busy renovating 10 studio apartments on the second floor of a currently vacant building. He bought the property nine months ago because he saw the neighborhood as "up and coming."
The ground floor of the building was leased Tuesday to Jeff and Shelia Kish, who plan to open a vintage and new clothing store in December.
Bernbach said the renovations are designed to maintain the building's historic feel, but right next door, there's a modern touch being added to the street.
Developers Brian Faherty and Lance Marrs on Nov. 16 will go before the Portland Design Commission to seek final approval of Bside 6, a 7-story mixed-use building designed by Works Partnership Architecture, which earned two awards from the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects for its design.
"When we had a pre-design review, the question of how this building would fit with its surroundings came up," Faherty said. "You have historic buildings next to surface lots, and the Plaid Pantry next door. But we think it's going to fit very well, especially with the Rocket and the Burnside Bridgehead in the future. We're a part of the pioneering of the new Lower Burnside."
Faherty said he realized about three years ago that it was prime time to snatch up property along East Burnside. "We work on Southeast Oak and Sixth, so we're already part of the neighborhood. What we liked about the Central Eastside is that it's a real working men and women neighborhood, and we like the fact that Burnside, more than other streets like Hawthorne and Belmont, could become this neat little urban enclave to have retail, businesses and services to provide more of a mix and more diversity to the expanding neighborhood."
The corner of the empty lot where Bside 6 is slated to stand is currently a top spot for day laborers, who gather there everyday. Faherty said that's part of the fabric of the neighborhood. "That is something that we kind of embrace as a working neighborhood; we're not trying to displace them. They're already sort of moving down to Couch Street."